#TPB
MOTIVATION
“Today the development often moves faster in technology than in the cultural realm.
But neither language barriers nor the copyright industry’s war on technology should impede people from partaking in new technologies and cultures”
— anakata, 2005-02-06, TPB blog
ACTION
“The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) is a website that provides torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in Sweden in 2003.”
IMPACT
- largest source for illegal media
- largest torrent index
- ex-largest torrent tracker
- (TPB has no tracker nowadays, the
CCChas)
- (TPB has no tracker nowadays, the
REACTION
- 2008: trial against TPB in sweden (copyright infringement)
- movie: “TPB: AFK” http://watch.tpbafk.tv
“On 17 April 2009, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of 30 million SEK (app. 4,200,000 USD; 2,800,000 GBP; or 3,100,000 EUR), after a trial of nine days.”
anakata
“On 27 November 2013 he was extradited to Denmark, where he was charged with infiltrating the Danish social security database, driver’s license database, and the shared IT system used in the Schengen zone. He is currently being held in solitary confinement, and is facing up to 6 years in prison in Denmark if he is found guilty.”
aaron swartz
“an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. Swartz was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the organization Creative Commons, the website framework web.py and the social news site, Reddit.”
MOTIVATION
“The system is changing. Thanks to the Internet, everyday people can learn about and organize around an issue even if the system is determined to ignore it. Now, maybe we won’t win every time – this is real life, after all – but we finally have a chance. But it only works if you take part.”
ACTION
- CreativeCommons
- Open Data
PACERdataJSTORdata
- also:
- wikileaks supporter
- DeadDrop
OpenLibrary
“Around 2006, Swartz acquired the Library of Congress’s complete bibliographic dataset: the library charged fees to access this, but as a government document, it was not copyright-protected within the USA.
By posting the data on OpenLibrary, Swartz made it freely available.
The Library of Congress project was met with approval by the Copyright Office.”
PACER
“In 2008, Swartz downloaded and released about 2.7 million federal court documents stored in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.”
PACER
PACER
- used account of sacramento library
($1.5M bill) - FBI investigated,
but “found nothing wrong” (source)
JSTOR
“Swartz used JSTOR, a digital repository, to download a large number of academic journal articles through MIT’s computer network over the course of a few weeks in late 2010 and early 2011. At the time, Swartz was a research fellow at Harvard University, which provided him with a JSTOR account.”
IMPACT
“This was part of how Aaron approached things. [… His PACER activities were] a project to liberate the documents but also an effort to make public the problems that existed to hopefully solve the larger policy problem.”
REACTION
“On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after systematically downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR. Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release.”
“Two years later, two days after the prosecution denied his lawyer’s second offer of a plea bargain, Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn, New York apartment, where he had hanged himself.”
julian assange
MOTIVATION
“The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.
This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive ‘secrecy tax’) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.”
“Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems.
Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.”
ACTION
- 2006: founding of WikiLeaks
- 2010: U.S. leaks
- etc.…
More leaks:
IMPACT
“Egypt: During the Egyptian revolution, the cables gave the rest of the world a stark and unflinching look at the brutality of Mubarak and his regime, facts of which Egyptians were already well aware. […]
Tunisia: The cables have been credited with directly influencing what came to be known as the Jasmine Revolution […]”
REACTION
“Assange is wanted for questioning regarding alleged sexual misconduct with two women while in Sweden in August 2010, and has not been formally charged.
The arrest warrant was […]issued on 1 September 2010.”
“On 16 August 2012 Ricardo Patiño, the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, stated in a press conference that the Ecuadorian government was granting Assange political asylum.”
“Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service have remained stationed outside the Ecuadorian embassy since Assange entered the building on 19 June 2012. They have been ordered to arrest Assange if he attempts to leave the building.”
“Police disclosed in February 2013 that, as of 31 January 2013, the full cost of keeping officers outside the embassy was estimated at £2.9 million ($4.5 million).”
satoshi nakamoto
中本哲史
MOTIVATION
“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
“The Times 03/Jan/2009
Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”
ACTION
- 2009: invented Bitcoin
- “proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust”
- in a 9-page PDF!
IMPACT
1 BTC = $820.00
“Nakamoto is believed to be in possession of roughly
one million bitcoins.
At one point in December 2013, this was the equivalent of 1.1 billion US dollars.”
REACTION
NONE¯\(°_o)/¯
edward snowden
MOTIVATION
“My sole motive is
to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” in: The Guardian, 2013-06-09
ACTION
- copied thousands of internal NSA documents
- is leaking them to journalists
- creates public debate
IMPACT
REACTION
“On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, and alleging he had violated the US’ 1917 Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and ‘willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person’.”
“On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport. […] He was […] changing planes in the Moscow airport when the United States revoked his passport.”
“Snowden remained in the Sheremetyevo transit zone for 39 days until being granted temporary asylum by the Russian government on August 1”